Compucolor BASIC tokenized file

Revision as of 17:21, 6 January 2013

The Compucolor computer line was one of the first to support color in text modes as well as graphic mode. The original Compucolor I used an 8-track tape drive to store programs, while the later and more popular Compucolor II had a 5.25" disk drive. BASIC programs had a .BAS extension. The BASIC language was an adapted version of Microsoft BASIC (as was true of many BASICs of the time).

Not much information is readily available about its tokenization system, but it was presumably similar to that of the other Microsoft BASICs, which tended to have the same general scheme, differing only in the specific token assignments. (See articles on other tokenized BASICs for more details.) Some clues as to the possible token values can be seen in the April 1979 newsletter for Compucolor users (the particular part of relevance is at page 33 of the PDF linked below) where shortcut keys for various BASIC commands are listed. These keys use the Control or Command keys along with letters, numbers, or symbols. It is likely these have some correspondence with the token values, most likely with the Command-plus-letter keys representing the high-bit-set version of the control character corresponding to the given letter (e.g., Command-B standing for hex 82, which is Control-B with the high bit set), and the Control-plus-number-or-symbol perhaps representing the high-bit version of that ASCII character. This would produce a token set not much different from those of the other BASICs.

Tokens

(likely tokens reconstructed from clues as noted above)

Documentation

• Compucolor newsletters
• Compucolor II manual; has character set chart and description of control and escape codes
• Compucolor II programming manual rev 1
• Compucolor II Programming manual rev 2
• More Compucolor info